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Giving Back To Stand Out From The Pack

An entrepreneur who mortgaged his life savings for his first company, launched Branded Group in 2014 with a sincere desire to #BeBetter.

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A healthy dose of competition keeps a growing business on its toes. As an entrepreneur, the last thing you want is for you or your team to rest on its laurels if you want your company to thrive. How do you prevent your team from getting too comfortable with the status quo? How do you stand out from your competition? The answer may lie in how your company is making a difference.

When I founded my business, it was based on this simple principle: be better. While not an earth-shattering idea, its grandiosity is in its simplicity. The very words “be better” are designed to keep people out of their comfort zones. Answering an email to a client? Reread it a few times to ensure the message is clear. Leading a meeting? Have a prepared agenda so goals are accomplished.

Simple actions, taken together on a consistent basis are how we live our mission.

Our dedication to excellence is what makes us stand out from the competition. But that’s not the only thing that makes us different. Led by our philosophy and my desire to build a company that was focused on purpose in addition to profits, we formed a social impact program. How can a social impact program make you stand out from your competition? These are the three steps we took to develop and implement our program.

Align Seamlessly

When selecting a nonprofit partner, it is important to ensure that their mission aligns with your business objectives and personal passion. Anyone can write a check to a deserving organization, yet if there’s a disconnect between its purpose and yours, then your team, clients and even your competition may be left scratching their heads. As I contemplated my company’s nonprofit partner, I went back to drawing board.

What services does my business offer? Who are my clients? What value do we bring? As a facility maintenance company, we’re in the business of fixing things for our restaurant and retail clients, enabling them to do what they do in the best way possible each day. Naturally, we’d want to take this approach and choose a partner that accomplishes similar goals.

We aligned with Habitat for Humanity of Orange County. Their goals of improving other people’s lives mirrored our business purpose. Our partnership has grown substantially, and in 2018, our team will volunteer 250 hours, the equivalent amount of time it takes to build an entire home.

Engage Your Team

Leaders must lead by example if they want to inspire their teams. Walking the walk in addition to talking the talk builds trust. As my team members stood beside me on various Habitat for Humanity home builds, my passion for this cause was evident. With every swing of the hammer or lifting of a paintbrush, my team saw that I was committed to delivering on our promise to improve the lives of deserving families.

But was it enough? Would my requests for my team members to join me on these build events create a program that stood the test of time? How could I make it a part of our everyday business operations so that each team member was invested?

When we looked at the core of our business -- responding to client’s service calls -- the answer was clear. We decided to take each completed service call and transform it into one minute of volunteering. Our business operations now support our social impact program.

Formalize Your Program

Great ideas are only great if they move off the drawing board into real life. We took steps to put systems and procedures into place that would track our client calls, enabling us to easily report on progress. As monthly totals began to increase, the excitement for the various build projects grew. When team members stood side by side with the families whose homes they were helping to build, there was a confirmation that the job they did every day really was making a difference.

Every time a team member completed a service call, they knew it would help a family in need, which provided purpose. Their jobs now meant more than a paycheck or a promotion. Their efforts meant that a family could gather around a dinner table in their own home. This was simply life-changing.

People think it’s the out-of-the-box ideas that create a competitive differentiator for a business. Many times, this is true. However, sometimes it’s the simplest ideas that really make people stop and stare. Aligning your social impact program with the vision of your business is as simple as it gets. But when it’s executed flawlessly and consistently with an engaged team, it truly is what makes you stand out from the competition and creates future humanitarian leaders.

An entrepreneur who mortgaged his life savings for his first company, launched Branded Group in 2014 with a sincere desire to #BeBetter.

Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) is an invitation-only, fee-based organization comprised of the world's most successful entrepreneurs 45 and younger. YEC members represent nearly every industry, generate billions of dollars in revenue each year and have created tens of th...